December 20, 2012\u2014In the ruins of the Maya city Xultun, a National Geographic explorer has uncovered written calculations that contradict the supposed prediction that the world will end on December 21.

Scientists unearth new Maya calculations. Will the world really end in 2012?

I'm Lucie McNeil and this is National Geographic On Assignment-your link to thousands of Nat Geo Expeditions around the globe.

Today we go deep into Guatemala's northern rainforest, where National Geographic's Bill Saturno has been working in the ancient Maya city of Xultun.\u00a0 His team unearthed a small room that may have been a workroom for Maya scribes.

Paintings and unfinished sketches covered some of the walls, but on one\u2014there were numbers, calculations and tables.

BILL SATURNO, VOC: \"The most important one is probably right here, painted in the ninth century AD.\"

Advanced photographic techniques helped reveal a hidden set of numbers\u2014calculations referring to dates some 7000 years in duration\u2014contradicting the idea that the Maya thought the world would end in December 2012.

BILL SATURNO, VOC: \"The Maya counted cycles of time, like the odometers of our cars. With each passing day, the digit clicks over to the next digit. We're approaching the period in which the next digit will change. Now for some, that means the calendar comes to an end. For the Maya, that's not how they saw it. For the Maya, that was the beginning of a new cycle. In the same way that we might rejoice in hitting 100,000 miles in our car.\"